Tagliolini in spring

Modena, interior scene, night time. The kitchen of Massimo Bottura’s Osteria Francescana at the end of the shift. A group of young cooks, male and female, finish cleaning up while chatting and smiling as music fills the rooms. “The Crystal Ship” by The Doors, in particular. Looking at them, the chef turns and says: «Osteria Francescana has never been so strong, so healthy. The energy is crazy. These guys don’t run away as soon as work is over, they stop, speak, joke. It’s delightful to see».

Massimo Bottura has just made us taste a couple of dishes he will present in May at Identità Expo San Pellegrino. So we ask him which of these two previews he’d like to say something about. Bottura ponders, for a whole minute. Then: «I’ll speak about tagliolini primavera».

Where did you get the inspiration for this dish?
This was a classic I always found, in the Seventies and Eighties, when I was dining out with my parents and family. Nothing more than seasonal diced vegetables and tagliolini: let’s start from this premise.

So what happened to the tagliolini?
Everyone here, during the holidays, has the classic holiday homework. They have to think about things that are familiar to them and this is where the idea of working with fermentations came from. We had some tagliolini left too long in water with parmesan and we tried to ferment them. The result was a miso of tagliolini cooked in this special water.

How did spring enter this dish?
On the base of the plate there’s a crème prepared with a classic Japanese technique. Broad beans, peas and asparagus are stir fried, strained, put into a vacuum pack, cooked in their juice and blended. We then added some egg white and cooked in a steam oven, so the vegetables thicken. It’s all a question of proportions.

Are these the same vegetables later cut into matchsticks?
Exactly. They are first marinated in essential oils, then they are just seared. We put all sorts of aromatic herbs on top, recalling the scents you would smell while walking in a field in spring, from mint to rocket salad and much more. To finish with a little minerality, we added some matchsticks of spring black truffle. We made a soup with the tagliolini miso, filtering it so as to make it very limpid, and we then poured it on the crème. The result is a tagliolini primavera abstract, which starts from oriental techniques and moves through the past of Italy in the Seventies and then arrives in 2015, when we have the fresh pasta fermenting.

In which way does this dish represent your idea of what Expo 2015 should be like?
It’s very simple. We start from a mistake, from over cooked pasta, but we don’t throw it away, we recycle it and ferment it. This is what food for the soul is like: ethics side by side with aesthetics.

An idea which you, together with many other chefs, are developing with the Refettorio Ambrosiano project too...
This is the most important project in my career. No wonder everyone accepted: Redzepi, Adrià, Humm, and all the others. We will cook for school pupils in the morning and for the poor in the evening, for six months. This perspective thrills me deeply.